The gallery opens

Suumee 溯美 is curated like a gallery rather than stocked like a shop. The collection runs across several bodies of work, each with its own discipline: the mythical beasts of the Shan Hai Jing, gongbi flower-and-bird studies painted with a fine brush, ink-wash landscapes, the twenty-four solar terms, neo-Chinese guochao design, and Dunhuang murals in mineral pigment. Every piece is original to this shop — no reproduced works, no borrowed paintings. Some of it belongs on a wall in a frame. Some of it belongs on a tee, which is the point: a lotus caisson from a cave ceiling looks entirely at home on cotton, and a magpie on plum branches carries a wish that predates all of us. Everything is printed to order. Three below: peony and lotus in porcelain blue, a lotus caisson tee, and dancing apsaras. Mythic beasts, ink and silk.